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Updated: August 5, 2024
What she saw was the soul of the world giving up its sin into the scale of God from which Heart break or world burn! that sin must never be disturbed. As she went slowly across the front of the room in answer to her name, a girl came out of one of the aisles and stood almost in her path. Ruth looked up and found herself staring dully into the fierce, piercing eyes of Cynthe Cardinal.
"Why don't you come see, if you want to know?" retorted Cynthe sharply. Jeffrey had no ready answer. So Cynthe went on: "If you wanted to know why didn't you come up all Winter and see? Why didn't you come up when she was nursing the dirty French babies through the black diphtheria, when their own mothers were afraid of them?
Then he asked suddenly, "What brought your mind to this view of the matter?" "A girl," said Jeffrey, "the girl that saved me; that French girl that loved Rafe Gadbeau. She showed me." Ah, thought the Bishop, Cynthe has been relieving her mind with some plain speaking. But he did not feel at all easy. He knew better than to treat the matter lightly.
She would love that girl, she would fetch for her, work for her, die for her! When that point-blank question came leaping upon the tortured girl in the stand, Cynthe rose to her feet. She expected to hear the girl stammer and blurt out something that would give them a chance to ask her further questions.
And when all was said and done Rafe Gadbeau was in Heaven. As she left the Run and was crossing up to the divide she met Jeffrey Whiting coming down. He had been over in the Wilbur's Fork country and was returning home. He stopped and showed that he was anxious to talk with her. Cynthe was not averse.
Before the sun was well up in the morning Jeffrey was on his way to French Village, to look out the cabin where Ruth had cared for old Robbideau Laclair, and had shamed the lazy men into fixing that roof. What he had heard the other day from Cynthe was by no means all that he had heard of the doings of Ruth during the last seven months.
Men roused themselves from sleep to cheer the young Whiting and to hobble the horses out and feed them. And shrill, voluminous women came forth to get food for the men and to wave hands and skillets wildly over the story of Cynthe Cardinal. The mention of the girl's name brought things back to Jeffrey Whiting.
"'Cynthe," said the little man briskly, "you show Miss Lansing on my pew for Mass." He took the bridle from Ruth's hand and led the horse away to the shed in the rear of the store. The fear and uneasiness of the early morning leaped back to Ruth. The little man had certainly run away from her question. Why should he not answer?
For when Jeffrey had told all, down to that moment in the dark road when he had found God in his heart, Ruth, with that instinct of mothering tenderness that is born in every woman, said: "Poor boy, you have suffered too much!" "What I suffered was that I made for myself," he said thickly. "Cynthe Cardinal told me what a fool I was." "What did Cynthe tell you?" "She told me that you loved me."
Did you ask somebody then? Why didn't you come see?" "Well," Jeffrey defended, "I didn't know about any of those things. And we had plenty to do here our place and my mother and all. I didn't see her at all till Easter Sunday. I sneaked up to your church, just to get a look at her. She saw me. But she didn't seem to want to." "But she should have been delighted to see you," Cynthe snapped back.
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